Mediterranean Salad

Tonight I only made part of dinner. On Wednesday evening when I got home, I ran up to our favorite local restaurant, Pita’s. It’s a wonderful Mediterranean place, and I grabbed two Gyros (about a foot long each) a large Mediterranean salad, and 4 pieces of baklava. We tossed the salad, the lettuce was bitter and disgusting (which is really unusual for this restaurant), and we only managed to eat one of the gyros between us, so we tucked the other one safely in the fridge with the last two pieces of baklava, for another night. Yesterday, while I was out, I made sure I had all the ingredients to make my own Mediterranean salad but last night we didn’t even eat supper. We were running around and we both just had a handful of almonds before bed and were satisfied (admittedly I had a really late lunch). Tonight I decided would be the best night to have the left overs and just throw the salad together…here’s what I did…

For the Dressing:

1/3 to 1/2 cup olive oil

1 teaspoon garlic powder (obviously you could crush or mince a garlic glove or two, but I was being lazy)

1 teaspoon dried oregano (if you can get Greek oregano, by all means use it, I just used the generic stuff I had on hand)

1 teaspoon dried basil

3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (eyeball it)

3/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon onion powder

2 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

Put all the ingredients into a smallish bowl or jar with a tight-fitting lid and mix them together really well. It is a really thin dressing, so be careful when you pour it on!

For the Salad:

Two heads of romaine lettuce, torn as you like it

1/2 of a medium red onion, sliced thin

1/2 of a tomato, diced

1/4 of an English cucumber, chopped (I don’t peel mine)

1/4 cup of Kalamata olives, sliced or chopped

1/4-1/2 cup of crumbled feta

Toss it all together and pour over as much or as little dressing as you like. I don’t usually toss my salads together, because I usually make too much and if you put the tomatoes in it gets gross, so you can just assemble your salads on your plates if you like. I didn’t put in as many olives as I normally would, since we’d been eating them right out of the jar. You could also very easily use black olives in place of the Kalamatas

I think tomorrow I may use up the last of the dressing by making Greek Pasta Salad. If it works as well as I think it will, I’ll share it with you.